The Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh government to expedite the recovery of public funds disbursed to ineligible beneficiaries under welfare schemes, questioning prolonged administrative delays after officials issued repetitive rounds of notices across multiple years.
Disposing of a public interest litigation in an order passed on September 10, a division bench comprising Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Manjive Shukla instructed that the matter be placed before the additional chief secretaries or principal secretaries of both the Panchayati Raj and Social Welfare departments to ensure prompt and effective clawback of the misappropriated funds.
Concerns Over Protracted Delays and Notice Cycles
The bench voiced strong concern over the administration’s pace of enforcement, observing that authorities had issued recovery notices as early as 2019 and had now resorted to issuing fresh notices.
Questioning how long the exercise of issuing notices would continue, the judges observed that the state is obligated to protect public money. The court noted that continued failure by the government to carry out this duty invites speculation regarding the reasons behind administrative inaction.
The bench stressed that managing and expediting the recovery process should have been handled directly by the state government rather than requiring judicial intervention. The court noted that it intervened solely because public money had been improperly handed to ineligible recipients.
Unaccounted Amounts in Housing and Pension Schemes
The court highlighted notable gaps in the state’s counter affidavit regarding the full financial scale of the irregularities across two separate welfare programs.
Regarding the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the bench recorded that authorities have retrieved 9.60 lakh rupees to date. However, the judges pointed out that the government failed to disclose the total outstanding sum required to be recouped from ineligible individuals who received benefits under the housing scheme.
The court raised similar concerns regarding the Uttar Pradesh Social Security Pension Scheme, under which 99 ineligible individuals were granted pensions. According to the bench, the state’s submissions mentioned neither the total amount slated for recovery nor whether any sum had actually been retrieved under the pension scheme.
Disciplinary Inquiry Against Village Level Officer
The bench also took note of departmental disciplinary proceedings previously initiated against a gram panchayat adhikari in relation to the irregularities.
Observing that the administrative inquiry ultimately ended with the charges against the official remaining unproven, the court declined to make any observations on the matter.
